Fast and Furious fallout: Man sentenced to 30 years in border agent's death

TUCSON, Ariz. -- A man convicted in
the shooting death of a federal Border Patrol agent during a firefight that
revealed the government's botched gun-smuggling investigation known as
Operation Fast and Furious was sentenced Monday to 30 years in
prison.

Manuel Osorio-Arellanes, who is from
El Fuerte in the Mexican state of Sinaloa, is the only person to be convicted
in the Dec. 14, 2010, shooting death of Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry near
the Arizona-Mexico border.

U.S. District Court judge David C.
Bury handed down the sentence, 360 months with credit for time served.

The shootout erupted just north of the
Arizona border city of Nogales as Osorio-Arellanes and four other men who are
accused of sneaking into the country to rob marijuana smugglers approached
Terry and three other agents who were targeting such rip-off crews.

Osorio-Arellanes was wounded in the
shootout and was the only person arrested at the scene. Four other alleged
rip-off crew members fled to Mexico. Two of the four are now in Mexican
custody, while two others remain fugitives.

Osorio-Arellanes maintains he was not
the shooter who killed Terry, and prosecutors agree that evidence supports his
claim. Still, they say he is liable because he was a voluntary participant in
the rip-off crew.

Two rifles bought by a gun-smuggling
ring that was being monitored in the Fast
and Furious investigation were found
at the scene of the firefight, though authorities have declined to say whether
the murder weapon in Terry's death was linked to a purchase from the
investigation.

Last month,
CBS News investigative correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reported that the
Justice Department's Inspector General was making inquiries into the possible
existence of a missing third weapon in the 2010 murder of Terry. According to
sources close to the investigation, the IG was questioning the Border Patrol’s
evidence collection team in Tucson, Ariz.

Federal authorities who conducted Fast and Furious
have faced criticism for allowing suspected straw gun buyers for a smuggling
ring to walk away from gun shops in Arizona with weapons, rather than arrest
them and seize the guns. Agents allowed the purchase of 2,000 guns, but they
then lost track of more than 1,400 of them. Some of the guns purchased
illegally with the government's knowledge were later found at crime scenes in Mexico
and the United States.

The guilty plea by Osorio-Arellanes in
October 2012 marked the biggest conviction to date in a case that embarrassed
the federal government and prompted a series of congressional investigations.
Members of the gun-smuggling ring that was being monitored in the Fast and Furious
investigation have pleaded guilty to federal charges.